So on April 1, at around 0830 hours ADT, a guy named Doug hacked into my website and converted it into a LiveJournal. Luckily I was able to save the day using regular expressions!
Now that the world is safe (and blue) once again, it's time to write a post about C&C 3: Kane's Wrath.
I built my computer, Diaeresis (photos available), specifically for the game Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. Well, that's not entirely true. I was planning on purchasing a new PC in 2007 in order to play the games Bioshock and Portal, which were due out in the middle of the year. Then I heard news of C&C 3, yet another game in Westwood's original (and amazing) series of games. Even though the retarded monkeys had long ago purchased Westwood, dissolved most of its employees and crushed all creativity within a 10-kilometre radius of its headquarters, I somehow remained hopeful. So I built Diaeresis about a half a year ahead of schedule.
Needless to say I was disappointed by C&C 3's terrible plot hole-heavy story and decidedly un-Command & Conquer-like gameplay. Somehow EA with its many simian minds came to the conclusion that Tiberium (a toxic yet valuable substance that science-fictionally is eating away at the surface of the Earth, transforming it into something inhospitably alien) should be made into an inorganic crystal, instead of its previously almost-alive look. That's definitely my biggest gripe with the game, and indeed the source of the majority of the game's plot holes.
At the end of C&C 2: Tiberian Sun, Tiberium was in the process of converting all unprotected life into horrific monsters. During the events of C&C 2: Firestorm, very little recognizable life remained on Earth. Nearly all of it, be it plant, animal, terrestrial or aquatic, was converted into a Tiberium-based equivalent. Tiberium itself spread like a plant, indeed mutating terran plants to suit its proliferation.
But then suddenly in C&C 3, Tiberium is just this mostly inanimate crystal. The Earth itself is mostly fine. There are no horrible mutants flying around, no Tiberium-based life at all. Suddenly there are vast regions of the Earth that are not at all exposed to Tiberium. Suddenly the oceans aren't teeming with Tiberium to the point that ships can't move at all. It's as if C&C 3 weren't based in the same world as C&C or C&C 2 at all.
This and many other plot holes were not resolved in Kane's Wrath. (Ha! I bet you were expecting me to say the opposite of that!) I'm just as disappointed with Kane's Wrath as I was with C&C 3. The story itself was interesting, since everything happens from the point of view of Kane, the primary antagonist in all C&C games. Kane is a very charismatic and intelligent character, so it's always a good thing to see him on screen. Kane's Wrath did not fail to deliver.
Apparently realizing that C&C 3 was full of holes, EA made the story of Kane's Wrath take place before, during and after the events of C&C 3. This allowed them to fill a few of the less glaring holes, such as what happened to certain characters behind the scenes, or indeed how Kane managed to survive his own death in C&C 2. Some of the events in Kane's Wrath fit so well into the main story of C&C 3 that it almost makes me wonder whether EA left plot holes there on purpose in order to magnificently fill them in later. Honestly, though, I don't give them that much credit.
Kane's Wrath was fun, albeit short. I found out that the computer cheats in the later levels, and that really ruined the experience. But its story was good enough and fit disturbingly well into the main story, so I was definitely entertained by it. That is, afterall, the point of games.
Gameplay is exactly the same as C&C 3, except with these new special units called "epic units". All of the epic units are terrible wastes of money except for the GDI epic unit, which is utterly overpowered compared to the other two. I don't know how that slipped through the cracks, but maybe there will be a patch to balance things out.
If you liked C&C 3, then you'll like Kane's Wrath. It's exactly the same.